News headlines in January 2015

BONN, Jan 31 (IPS) - The first global treaty dealing with biodiversity was the Ramsar Convention – predating the Rio processes by 20 years.

BABINEY, Cuba, Jan 31 (IPS) - Most people in Cuba without toilets use the traditional outhouse. But an innovative, ecological alternative is catching on in remote rural communities.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 30 (IPS) - A recent case study on Canadian mining abuses in Latin America has woven one more thread of justice in the tapestry of international law.

HARARE, Jan 30 (IPS) - For 47-year-old Albert Mangwendere from Mutoko, a district 143 kilometres east of Harare, the Zimbabwean capital, transporting his three pregnant wives using a wheelbarrow to a local clinic has become routine, with his wives delivering babies one after the other.

MUMBAI, Jan 30 (IPS) - Following the birth of her third child, Delhi-based entrepreneur Smita* found herself feeling "disconnected and depressed", often for days at a stretch. "Much later I was told it was severe post-partum depression but at the time it wasn't properly diagnosed," she told IPS.

MEXICO CITY, Jan 29 (IPS) - The mother tongue of Celso García, a 51-year-old indigenous Mexican, is Mixteca. As a boy, García, the father of one of the 43 students forcibly disappeared four months ago, had to learn Spanish to make his way in mainstream society in this country where most people are of mixed-race heritage.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 29 (IPS) - After almost 10 years of often frustrating negotiations, the U.N. ad hoc committee on BBNJ decided, by consensus, to set in motion a process that will result in work commencing on a legally binding international instrument on the conservation and sustainable use, including benefit sharing, of Biological Diversity Beyond Areas of National Jurisdiction.

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Jan 29 (IPS) - With agriculture as one of the drivers of economic growth, Zimbabwe needs to invest in the livelihoods of smallholder farmers who keep the country fed, experts say.

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, Jan 29 (IPS) - A rupture inside the movement for the creation of an independent state of Kurdistan has given new impetus to the voices of those condemning the use of weapons as the way to autonomy.